What's it all about?

40 nights for the orphans of India. My 'Lent in a Tent' is about raising hugely needed funds for 'Shining Faces in India' orphanage in Salem, Tamil Nadhu, by sleeping ouside the Chaplaincy at King's Bruton for 40 nights. My target is at least £10,000 - which amazingly is only enough to feed the hundreds of children there for about two months.I hope that many might be inspired to trade 40 pounds for my 40 nights. Actually, in the back of my mind I'm convinced that we could smash through the target and go much much further ... I wonder.

Friday, 15 February 2013

Near miss! ... evening 10/40

What an astronomical day!

First a meteor just 20ft across shoots through the Russian skies leaving in its wake a trail of destruction from it's sonic boom and atmospheric disintegration. Then an asteroid skims earth even inside the orbit of our own communication satelites - not 20ft across but 150ft! Just 17,200 miles from hitting, travelling at 17,450mph. I looked for it at 8.00pm but the skies were too overcast to see. What if it didn't pass but hit instead ... ? Then?

Well how about this? At midnight, Aug. 10th 1998, a similar asteroid blasted through the exact location in space where the Earth had been just
18 hours earlier. If that 18 hours
hadn’t been there it's likely that neither we, nor the children at the orphanage, would be here now. If it had reached that same point at 6.00am
the previous morning an area the size of France would have been devastated by
6.05am. Most of the world’s vegetation would have been in flames by 8.00am, and 30-40% of the human
race would have been gone by late October.

It reminds me of my 'Hidden worlds' post after night 2/40. Things pass us by which, if we'd connected, would have the hugest of impacts on us. But they pass by, and that impact just doesn't happen. But not all connections are destructive. Many are life-giving and even life-changing.

If we can make that kind of connection somehow ... cause that impact ... then we cause the effect ...

It's one reason I just love this image. Here's the 2011 team on their first day at the orphanage, and in the foreground two of the children in their school uniform. Two worlds colliding. Westerners in western clothes meet Indians in Indian dress. If we'd done nothing, those 5 would never have felt the impact of India in their lives. As it is? Not a life-passing orbit, but a life-changing impact!

We have so few years and so few days. Why blast through life on our own unaffected tragectory when we can impact and change things for ever?